Our History

The year was 1984. Dr. Shirish Parikh, the head of the Radiology Department at Albany's Veterans Administration Hospital, saw an opportunity to introduce progressive changes in radiological services. He and a colleague formed East Hudson Radiologists, P.C. and assumed operation of Samaritan Hospital's radiology department.

Believing that the key to making a difference in the radiology delivery system was to bring more sub-specialists into the community, East Hudson Radiologists continually expanded the practice over the next decade — adding orthopedic radiologists, nuclear medicine and mammography specialists, and neurological radiologists. East Hudson Radiologists was able to attract these specialists by affiliating with various radiology groups, acquiring new hospital contracts and achieving a broad patient base that individual community hospitals could not provide.

By 1993, East Hudson Radiologists had grown to encompass 20 radiologists serving four hospitals and three out-patient imaging centers, under the name ImageCare Medical Imaging, which cumulatively performed a quarter of the area's radiology procedures. Soon thereafter, recognizing a shortage of primary care physicians and the effects of managed care in an unprepared region, leaders of the group pioneered the idea of forming the first fully-integrated multispecialty group practice in the Capital Region.

To reflect the new, expanded role of the practice, it was renamed East Hudson Community Care Physicians in 1993. The practice began negotiating with several primary care groups in 1995, and the first group of physicians came on board that spring.

Since then, the medical group has undergone extensive growth. Today, Community Care Physicians, P.C. (CCP) is a New York State Professional Corporation and the largest independent multi-specialty medical group in the Capital Region, with over 40 locations and over 1,200 employees. It is a physician-owned, physician run medical group. Community Care Physicians offers many different medical specialties including: Internal Medicine, Family Medicine, Pediatric Medicine, Obstetrics/Gynecology, ImageCare Medical Imaging, Medical Oncology and Hematology, Image Guided Radiation Therapy, Interventional Radiology, Vascular Surgery, General Surgery, Urology, Physical Therapy, Urgent Care, Laboratory, Audiology, Dermatology, Podiatry, Diabetes Education and Nutrition, Occupational Medicine, Bariatric Medicine, Sports Medicine, and Plastic Surgery.

Community Care Physicians, P.C. is a family of specialists and primary care practitioners who meet the health care needs of hundreds of thousands of patients every year throughout a five-county region, including Albany, Rensselaer, Saratoga, Schenectady and Fulton counties.

In 2005, CCP became the first fully integrated healthcare organization in the area to transition physical patient charts to an Electronic Medical Records (EMR) system. Since that time, CCP has continued to innovate, identifying new ways to integrate technology into patient care to enhance the patient-physician relationship and to simplify the delivery of care.

CCP continues to evolve. Building its physician network; adding new medical specialties; anticipating and adapting to changes in the health care delivery system; enhancing its high technology capabilities; and constantly creative more cost-effective, expeditious ways to deliver the very best in healthcare.